The environment of a remote sensing system for hyperspectral imagery (HSI) is well described in “Hyperspectral Image Processing for Automatic Target Detection Applications” by Manolakis, D., Marden, D., and Shaw G. (Lincoln Laboratory Journal; Volume 14; 2003 pp. 79-82). An imaging sensor has pixels that record a measurement of hyperspectral energy. An HSI device will record the energy in an array of pixels that captures spatial information by the geometry of the array and captures spectral information by making measurements in each pixel of a number of contiguous hyperspectral bands. Further processing of the spatial and spectral information depends upon a specific application of the remote sensing system.
Remotely sensed HSI has proven to be valuable for wide ranging applications including environmental and land use monitoring, military surveillance and reconnaissance. HSI provides image data that contains both spatial and spectral information. These types of information can be used for remote detection and tracking tasks. Specifically, given a set of visual sensors mounted on a platform such as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or a stationary ground station, a video of HSI may be acquired and a set of algorithms may be applied to the spectral video to detect and track objects from frame to frame.